Colorado: winter time, and the living is easy

Viceroy Snowmass

The seventh-floor penthouse

ASPEN Viceroy Snowmass

The Viceroy lies about seven miles from the town of Aspen, in
the purpose-built ski village of Snowmass. Opened in 2009, it feels
more youthful than most five-star hotels. Its Eight K restaurant
(so-called because of its altitude, 8,000ft above sea level) does
have something of the cool 'Chicago-Modern', business-lounge style
that characterises recent top-end ski hotels, but that is tempered
by outside-in elements such as pine-sapling screens and pillars
clad in black granite or leather. In the adjacent bar and lounge
there are more playful intrusions such as the 87ft-long, glowing
blue-glass bar lit by chandeliers and Christmas-tree lights, and
the 'fireplace', a glass box in which a line of flames rises from a
10ft-long burner.

The staff, many from South Africa and Australasia, are as
forthcoming as the hotel; the latest style of five-star service -
in which staff are the guests' new best friends rather than
over-helpful servants - flourishes here. The restaurant, which
specialises in modern reworkings of classic American dishes, is
attention-seeking, too: it offers pan-roasted black cod served with
black rice cake, black kale, black truffle butter and black trumpet
mushrooms.

The imposing, almost church-like spa, however, takes itself more
seriously. A wide repertoire of exotic rituals, reprieves and
retreats is available, including one that might suit a beginner
after a bruising encounter with the slopes: the 90-minute Herbal
Compress Healing Ritual is said to be based on a 14th-century Thai
muscle therapy for soldiers returning from battle.

The bedrooms are unobtrusively stylish, with a restrained
South-East Asian look of slatted brown wooden surfaces and black
tiles. Particularly good are the bathrooms, which are generous to a
fault: mine had a walk-in-and-around glass shower stall measuring
8ft by 4ft and, unusually, enough shelf-space for two people.

Because the most recent Snowmass construction plan has been
compromised by the economic recession, the Viceroy's isolation is
more glorious than it should be. But standing alone on a snowy
knoll, it does seem to take ownership of the
slopes.